


Wildflowers

by ofnopesandwhyatts



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M, Vignettes, wildflower mural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 20:00:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4974133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofnopesandwhyatts/pseuds/ofnopesandwhyatts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of vignettes in Leslie and Ben's early relationship centering around the Wildflower Mural. Originally posted on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wildflowers

Wildflowers.

 

The first thing truly out of the ordinary to catch his eye.

 

Pawnee’s various murals of atrocities were not unique to the town, he’d been all over Indiana, and that was a pretty common theme.

 

The apathy, the stupidity, the obesity, while at an all-time high in Pawnee, were an annoyance that came as no surprise.

 

And it wasn’t the mural that surprised him. He was no stranger to landscapes. He’d worked in the State Capitol, he’d seen actual masterpieces by acclaimed artists, and he’d walked right by, entrenched in the task at hand.

 

It surprised him, because he wasn’t expecting to care. Not about people, not about the town, and certainly not about a stupid mural.

 

He wasn’t expecting to hope. And in his sideways glance at the yellow flowers, he’d felt that disappointing and wonderful tug of hope in his gut.

 

He gulped it down. Hope was useless, it wouldn’t change the past. It wouldn’t change the object impermanence of a disgrace on the run.

 

He pushed the shape of the flowers from his mind but the color of yellow remained. Every blink of his eyes just brought a flash of yellow and his stomach jumped when he saw it through the Parks department's doors.

 

His mouth followed his mind’s instructions in his meeting, it was business as usual.

 

But his heart gripped onto the image of sunflowers in her hair, and it wouldn’t let it go.

 

Hope.

 

***

She was sitting in her favorite place with a guy she really liked.

 

“How did you know?"

 

"Know what?"

 

"That this is my favorite place in the world."

 

His eyes smiled even wider than his mouth.

 

"Is it? I just really like it here."

 

She opened her mouth to speak, but suddenly she couldn't. It felt so wrong just to tell him that she liked the flowers, as she usually would.

 

Her eyes welled up and she pointed to the plaque beneath the mural.

 

"Robert Knope. To my wild flower."

 

He looked down from reading and wiped a tear from her cheek.

 

"Not a Filipino man you've never met, I'm guessing."

 

She giggled. "My dad."

 

"You're the flower?"

 

She nodded.

 

"He died when I was ten. He always told me that a life in politics would be heartbreaking more often than not, and where my mom told me not to get my hopes up, he always encouraged me to do what I loved, despite everything else. And this painting, he left it to City Hall as like his last encouragement."

 

He held her, despite the potential consequences, and kissed her forehead.

 

“They’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

 

***

Ben's newest tactic for avoiding Leslie was arriving late and leaving late.

 

But as he was walking through the halls late at night, he felt tears well up in his throat and the ache in his chest and he went to the second floor just to see the mural.

 

He knew it was stupid to always look to it for hope. The mural was hope to him, but it was a Leslie kind of hope, and he had a physical chart in his room outlining how futile that hope was.

 

No matter how long he stuck it out, there was no way it could work. He knew she held onto a hope that once the campaign was over they could be together, but he had thought all of it out, and it would just become more unethical with every career step they took.

 

As he rounded the corner to visit the mural, he saw her.

 

Hugging her knees to her chest and looking at the petals, she was sobbing. In his bitterness he'd convinced himself that she was doing just fine, and it killed him to see her like that.

 

But he couldn't go to her, because he couldn't hold her.

 

He turned away.

 

***

 

December 27th, and she was back with him, and back at her job.

  
When he brought her lunch, she pulled him by his tie to her lips and the bench, and thus Wildflower Mural Day was born.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me at ofnopesandwhyatts.tumblr.com


End file.
